Full Name: Randall, Lilian Maria Charlotte
Other Names:
- Lilian M. C. Randall
Gender: female
Date Born: 1931
Place Born: Berlin, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)
Career(s): curators
Overview
Medievalist; Walters Art Gallery curator. Lilian Cramer was the daughter of Frederick Henry Cramer (1906-1954) and Elizabeth Agnes Ziegler (Cramer). Her father was a professor of history and avid racecar driver. The family immigrated to the United States 1938 from Nazi Germany where her father taught at Mount Holyoke College. Cramer graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College,1950 with an A. B., continuing graduate work at Radcliffe College, gaining an M. A. in 1951. A grant from American Association of University Women, 1953-1954 allowed her to complete her dissertation research. At Harvard she met a fellow art history graduate student Richard Harding Randall, Jr., whom she married in 1953. Her father was killed (age 48) taking part in the Tour de France auto race in 1954. Randall’s Ph.D., from Radcliffe was awarded in 1955 with a dissertation on medieval marginalia, some of the earliest work addressing the topic per se in art history. In 1957 her article in the Art Bulletin, “Exempla and their Influence on Gothic Marginal Illumination,” won the A. Kingsley Porter Prize from the College Art Association. She was an associate scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study between 1961 and 1963. In 1964 when her husband became assistant director of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, she joined Johns Hopkins University as a visiting lecturer in medieval art. During that time Randall completed her book on medieval marginalia, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts, published in 1966. She remained at Hopkins until 1968. After a year as assistant director at the Maryland Arts Council 1972-1973, the Walters Gallery hired her as curator of manuscripts and rare books in 1974. Randall developed a secondary interest in the history of American collecting, editing and publishing the diary of the art dealer George A. Lucas (1824-1909) in 1979. She became research curator of manuscripts in 1985 and research consultant for the Museum until 1997. Randall was named a member of the board of directors of the International Center for Medieval Art in 1978 (until 1982 and again 1996-). She was awarded a Getty grant for 1990-1992. Mount Holyoke College awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1998. Her work on marginalia was expanded upon by Michael Camille.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Gothic Marginal Illustrations: Iconography, Style, and Regional Schools in England, North France, and Belgium1250-1350 A.D. Radcliffe, 1955; “Exempla and their Influence on Gothic Marginal Illumination.” Art Bulletin 39 (June 1957): 97-107; “Fieschi Psalter.” Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 23 (1960): 26-47; Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; edited, The Diary of George A. Lucas: an American Art Agent in Paris, 1857-1909. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979; “Originality and Flair in an Early 15th Century Book of Hours: Walters 219.” Gesta 20 no. 1 (1981): 233-42; Illuminated Manuscripts: Masterpieces in Miniature: Highlights from the Collection of the Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore, MD: Walters Art Gallery, 1984;
Sources
Who’s Who in American Art. 17th edition. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1986, p. Nelson, Robert S., and Seidel, Linda. “Michael Camille: A Memorial.” Gesta 41 no. 1, no. 2 (2002): 138.